Stay or Leave: Manager Admitted I am on PIP because quota | Hacker News Reader

Stay or Leave: Manager Admitted I am on PIP because quota

teamblind.com

39 pointsmmrryy68 comments

Ugh. The OP asks that question like they have a choice. They're walking dead. OP is gonna be out at the end of the PIP, so he should start looking for another job. I mean, stay until they find something new or b) get the boot, but they're dead there.

The nice thing so, since it is a quota PIP, is that seeing said PIP through is now a goal of the direct manager and the manager's manager. That can actually lead to a situation, in which the employees interest of a generous package is actually in line with managements', getting the employee put to fulfill a quota and personal goals. If company money has to be spent to do so, then be it.

That being said, these situations suck. Ask me how I know.

Assuming the manager is actually telling the truth about why the employee was put on a PIP (maybe not a safe assumption?), then I think there are two important questions:

1) Is the quota for a number of people who need to be put on PIPs, or a number of people who need to be fired?

If it's the latter, the employee is effectively already fired; they're required to fire N people, and they're going to find a way to claim employee failed the PIP, no matter what. Obviously the employee will not be able to answer this question with any amount of certainty.

2) Are the goals that need to be achieved to pass the PIP unambiguous? That is, is it objectively obvious that the goal has been passed or failed?

If any of the goals are ambiguous, management could use that ambiguity to claim some goals haven't been achieved when the employee believes they have been, and use that to justify firing them.

Of course, the manager could also just by lying about why the employee is on a PIP. Maybe they do actually have a performance issue, but the manager is too much of a wuss to flat-out tell the employee this. I agree that it's suggestive that the manager seems to be setting the PIP's goals in such a way that they're relatively easy to achieve, but that might not be the whole story.

Either way, a company that has periodic PIP (or firing) quotas isn't a company I'd want to work at, so I'd start looking for a new job even if I'd still end up being retained after the PIP is over. Ideally I'd have a start date at a new place after the PIP is done, so I could explicitly give that reason for quitting, even though my job there would be (at least for the time being) secure.

This guys boss picked him to be on the performance improvement plan. Even if his boss was forced to pick someone because of quota, the fact that he was picked must mean he was at the bottom of the pack in terms of performance. My advice would be to be humble enough to admit that the performance can be improved and take ownership of that fact and not make excuses like " my boss put me on notice because of a quota, i guess i should quit"

that must mean this guy was still at the bottom of the pack in terms of performance

A.E Housman had something to say about the belief that the world is generally fair: "He [Joe Public] believes that the text of ancient authors is generally sound, not because he has acquainted himself with the elements of the problem, but because he would feel uncomfortable if he did not believe it; just as he believes, on the same cogent evidence, that he is a fine fellow, and that he will rise again from the dead. "

PIPs are used as tools to lay people off or get revenge often. It's not meant to be an actual "performance improvement plan." There's many stories of people hitting all requirements within the PIP to still not hit "the bar" due to a constantly arbitrary and changing PIP requirement. PIP is often a cowardice way to do layoffs or for upper management to not admit they have too many resources allocated for their own deliverables.

I've passed every PIP I've ever been put on (2x).

But in this case it's not even a real PIP.

In my experience, having PIP'd people, that's hasn't ever been the case. It's never fun for the manager or the person or the company. In 3/4 of the cases they passed with flying colours and both sides were glad we went through it.

I think it really depends on the place. I was PIP'd recently and genuinely thought I was doing something wrong, until it was clear the bar kept moving even though I was meeting all requirements. A few weeks in I discovered I wasn't the only one in that situation (4 others, all expensive senior employees) and the company had a history of using arbitrary PIPs to justify firing with cause instead of having to pay out severance (I'm in Canada)

Interesting.

I'm never been PIP'd myself, but I've seen it happen to many -- and it's never resulted in anything good, nor has it ever seemed as if the purpose was actually to improve anyone's performance. It's usually seems like just a thing that has to be done before you can fire them. Even when the PIP'd employee isn't fired, the PIP remains a scarlet letter on them for the rest of their time at that company.

I'm glad there are companies where this isn't the case! I wonder how common those are.

I think it may be a self-reinforcing attitude. When I mentioned to a coworker that I had been on a PIP and transitioned out of it, he was amazed. He'd never heard of anyone being removed from one so he assumed that once you're on a PIP you'll eventually be fired.

I think most people put on PIPs think the same: I'm going to be fired anyway, so why bother doing anything about this?

That said, I am absolutely convinced that the reason for the PIP is that they were trying to get rid of a number of (expensive) senior engineers.

I also think people have a tendency to be unrealistic (with themselves and/or others) about why they were fired. I certainly know that in terms of the employees I've let go, the version of events they've told people that got back to me were pretty far from what actually happened. Maybe some of those people who were fired after being on a PIP really were unjustly let go to cut costs, or maybe it's just more comfortable to tell people/themselves that. And since the manager/company probably isn't talking it's a narrative that generally doesn't get challenged.

I think it's a last resort for someone who isn't listening to a specific feedback well, it requires the manager (IME) to be crystal clear on what's not working well, and how they can improve it. And to follow up on in some cadence (every 3 days) with notes, laser focused. Giving an amount of time for the person to show they can and want to change.

In one of the cases the person who got pip'd got promoted to Staff Eng from Senior within a year, it was mostly about his attitude, not about his technical skills, and he changed completely. I think that person was just not self aware how people didn't enjoy working with him, even if the manager gave feedback, he thought it was funny or something like that.

It was a real "Am I the bad one" moment when the PIP process started. Another one was about how they always went too deep into rabbit holes and never delivered any value, to change the way they approach problems, etc.

I feel feedback from managers is extra challenging in remote environments OR in places where a person has been for too long and is too used to the status quo, and PIPs can help there.

I count myself luck that I haven't worked in companies where PIPs were used as a tool to layoff or fire people, but I also take some of those reports with a grain of salt.

> think it's a last resort for someone who isn't listening to a specific feedback well

Pretty much this at least when I've used it. What was surprising was I had an employee do a complete 180 when put on a PIP. They had been given lots of feedback, clear guidance, and even a direct, "we've talked about this, and it's putting your job in jeopardy, if this continues you will be fired" conversation prior to the PIP. I honestly expected to fire them and the end and thought I was just crossing my Ts and dotting my 'i's with HR, but to my shock the PIP seemed to shake something loose that nothing else did. All I can think is that putting a clear deadline on it finally got through. When I left a couple years later we were starting to talk about promoting them. Don't know if it ever happened.

I can't assert how other companies and managers use them, but the only time I've ever deployed PIPs is as a "we've talked about this, and this is now your last chance" with the honest intent (even if I'm not expecting it) that if the issues are resolved they are put behind us.

You and aprdm have given me a little bit of hope that some larger tech employers (I assume you're both with larger employers as I've never heard of a small employer that did PIPs) are decent when it comes to this sort of thing. It's good to know. Thank you.

IME in cases where a PIP is truly triggered by performance, 9 times out of 10 the manager has already tried very hard to address the issues and not seen results. It's unusual there's anything to be done.

I will see that as someone who mentors a number of engineers, some of the PIPs I see are ridiculous. Here's a verbatim quote from the PIP of an engineer at a decacorn: "Employee must not receive more than 3 pieces of corrective feedback on any single PR". That's _basically_ constructive dismissal.

Depends on the place. I was on a PIP. I met the requirements and at the end of the period, I was taken off the PIP and returned to "regular employment" status.

I quit anyway, but that's a whole other story.

IIRC, PIPs are literally designed mainly to create a paper trail to avoid unlawful termination lawsuits. By the time you're on a PIP, you're manager already has decided he doesn't like your performance and wants you out.

Suppose his coworkers are all working unreasonably long hours (whether out of fear, or poor work-life balance, or whatever), and he’s “only” working 40-45 hours a week. His output could be excellent, but he’d still be on the chopping block, no?

I don’t think him being chosen to receive the boot necessarily means his performance was poor. I mean, maybe it was, but from the outside I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion.

> the fact that he was picked must mean he was at the bottom of the pack in terms of performance.

Perhaps, but the difference between the bottom of the pack and the top of the pack might be negligible. We don't know.

> My advice would be to be humble enough to admit that the performance can be improved and take ownership of that fact

Sure, that's fine, but I still think that the odds are he'd be better off if he quits as well.

”Performance" is always difficult to define, and you could take most average employees and frame them in a low performance light some way or another.

The most frequent gripe I've seen were people late at a few meetings being marked as impacting the team. Like, sure that's not great and not polite, but would that be on par with generating 20k errors in production that need to be fixed a whole friday ?

> the fact that he was picked must mean he was at the bottom of the pack in terms of performance

Except, OP said that the boss chose him because he had the least amount of tenure (<1 year for OP versus > 3 years for everyone else).

Doesn't pass the smell test. Google managers should be sharing the areas that OP is underperforming with examples. It will be clear. There is no "My manager told me to arbitrarily pick someone" with no reason given.

My best guess is this person is underperforming and the manager is too focused on head count preservation to notice an underperformance issue. To them, their manager is forcing them in to this but not for the reasons they are sharing.

Either way, that's a bad manager, likely should be making plans to leave.

Unfortunately as someone who worked there in a management role for over 9 years, it’s heard of and talked about - but rarely directly.

I’m shocked OP was told the truth.

No truth was told to the OP. You need to document your reasons why a PIP is needed. As someone points out in this thread, the whole point of the PIP process is to get a paper trail ready if Google is going to fire someone to avoid accusations of discrimination. HR will block any PIP with "My manager says so" as the basis.

The people that say "My hand was forced" are lying to you and lying to themselves and are frankly poor managers.

My alternative theory and one that is more common and I'm not sure why it didn't come to me first is OPs manager is conflict avoidant and wants to always be the "good guy". Firing people is no fun. PIPs are no fun. It's the cowards way out to pass the buck.

To put it another way, if OP asked their skip why they are in a PIP, what do you think their answer would be? It'd likely be something like "Go read the PIP document yourself" because they have confidence they have documented underperformance in the PIP tool.

The whole point of having line managers write PIPs together with employees is to have these vaguely valid-seeming reasons on PIPs. There is, however, also a reason the PIP process got initiated. It is never the line manager that initiates a PIP process (you'd have to have exceptionally poor performance for that, frankly I wonder if they even have the power to do so).

You get onto a PIP because some external-to-the-team person, maybe a TPM, maybe a higher up manager, complained about you. They don't always explain why to your manager, in fact, it's probably generally a smart move for them NOT to say why (frankly, some people complain to your manager because you came to the office with untied shoelaces).

When that happens (maybe your manager gives you two or three "strikes"), your manager comes to you and writes a PIP. What that PIP will NEVER say is "make X not complain about you anymore". It will say "write more code", "take ownership of bugs", "take more feedback into account", because, as you point out, HR would freak if it said "do what X says". Plus, of course, if at all possible your manager will try to not have you work with that complaining person anymore. Which would make such a PIP redundant/impossible.

PIPs are always because someone asked for them. Maybe (hopefully) indirectly, and not always (one hopes never, but ...) for the reason "quota", but essentially always because someone asked for them. PIPs never say that, so they never give the real reason. The point is indeed to scare you into being "more cooperative".

HR kind-of tells the truth: the point of a PIP is to make you a better employee. It really is. All else equal, they want it to go away as much as you do. But if it doesn't go away, the point of a PIP is to fire you, safely, without getting sued afterwards, without HR having to do any work at all.

This is a perfect example of why we need a union for tech engineers. The “if you were better” argument or other reasons that people in tech love to use doesn’t apply here - this is a pure capital Vs labor power dispute.

This kind of bullshit and “sorry nothing I can do” response from a line manager is unacceptable to just be ok with - especially when it’s purely driven by rent seeking.

I've thought about building an international tech union, interfaced with via CLI. It would be so much fun (even the legal issues of having a union in so many countries)! Seriously, I'd love to do it, but I'm too broke to pull that one off -- I'd probably need millions just to get started.

There's a multinational seafarers' union called Nautilus International, so it's certainly possible. I don't know if in practice it's three national unions in a tight federation, though. A lot of labour law is national.

When engineers complain about poor management practices in the tech industry, and it sounds unbelievable, this post should be an example of how bad things are in this industry.

For engineers, the only way to survive is play the game but stop caring about the company because they don't care about you.

There are many businesses that could not define a PIP because they have no idea how to define performance. You can find one of these and hide for the rest of your career. If your PIP has milestones like 'write 10 emails per day' or 'participate in 10 hours of meetings per week', maybe you already found one of those companies. If you yourself struggle to define what 'performance' means in your job, isn't that a red flag all by itself? You can use this as an opportunity to understand the expectations of your employer (or at least your employer's agents). Or you can take this as a final confirmation that you are not achieving any personal fulfillment in this job. If you have to ask strangers, I sense you are quite lost in your current job.

> If you yourself struggle to define what 'performance' means in your job, isn't that a red flag all by itself?

No? How do you define the performance of a doctor? Nurse? Teacher? Developer? Tech Support?

Most of these roles have metrics that might seem like easy and foolproof ways to measure performance, but ask anyone that has actually worked any of these professions for more than 2 min, and you'll have endless tails of management fucking everything up by chasing a dumb number.

If your job matters in the slightest, it's not that rare for performance to be wildly elusive to measure.

> you can take this as a final confirmation that you are not achieving any personal fulfillment in this job

It's interesting that you say that because it's exactly what I realized from being put on a PIP and it was a large part of why, after being removed from the PIP, I quit a few months later.

The company that employs me has a stack ranking system that determines raises, but does not mandate PIP even for the lowest-ranked, unless they genuinely are not meeting expectations. I would advocate looking for a more employee-friendly employer. Any firm with this kind of policy most likely has other awful policies

When I was at Amazon, the newly hired team lead was incompetent and insecure, so this person ruled the team by fear - PIP'ed people trigger happy (myself included). HR did nothing, even though this was a recurring behavior even after I left. It was just flagged, that is not possible to PIP people without actual prior performance issues and informal conversations to address them. Fast forward to today - the person is still there and eventually was promoted. In EU, where labour laws are much stronger it's not as effective, but it's pretty much a one way ticket.

I only learned about what is a Performamce Improvement Plan (PIP) from managerial training at my BigCorp.

Assuming it works pretty consistently across the industry, a PIP basically means you are slated to be fired.

Circumstances may change, and by all means pay attention to and try to improve the metrics they ask you to improve, but don't hold any illusions. You are almost certainly leaving that job in the next year one way or another.

You should try to leave on your own terms, i.e. find another job and submit your resignation.

My advice is to let them fire you. Waste the managers time until the last day so that they suffer during that time as well.

Once you are fired, you can apply for unemployment benefits which is paid for by the insurance of that company.

If they are not willing to treat employees humanely, it is fair game for employees to not be honest with them.

Business relationships are not zero sum games. There is no benefit to you to making them suffer (besides I guess some temporary pleasure in the vindictiveness?). Focus on what helps you long term; if there are relationships with individual managers you can keep a good relationship with that can come back around as a future benefit. But mostly know from the corporate perspective this is "just business" and you should look out for your own interests not theirs.

Exactly, it should be taken as "just business" from an employee perspective. From employee perspective, they should capitalize on the fact that the pay will disappear soon. So might as well use that time to benefit their own future, much like the employer is doing.

I can't see a possible reason to have a PIP quota if there isn't an associated headcount reduction quota. I doubt there's anything OP can do to save their job.

Do the bare minimum to last out the 6 months or whatever and spend the time interviewing and applying.

Get some documentation that proves this. Hire a lawyer. Go to HR. Get a settlement...

This is sarcasm, right?

If not: in general, in the US, it's perfectly legal for a company to just arbitrarily decide they need to fire N people, and arbitrarily choose a particular person to fire meet that "quota". This is true regardless of how many layers of managers are involved, or what bullshit PIP hoops are jumped through.

There would only be a legal issue if the worker was subject to a bona-fife employment contract (quite rare) or if they were discriminated against on the basis of a legally protected characteristic. Just being the least senior member of a team is not legally protected.

There are legal requirements around doing layoffs. A quota of PIPs is a stealth layoff. I’d say OP has a point.

> if the worker was subject to a bona-fife employment contract (quite rare)

It's funny -- I've never heard that these were rare except in comments on HN, and with every job I've had in the industry, I've had a real employment contract (along with all of the devs I personally know well enough to know that about them.)

Is this "employment contracts are rare" thing a SV norm, perhaps?

Not sarcastic but you're probably right in terms of no real legal course. But here's the thing, you're getting fired anyway. Depending on company size, they may give you something nominal just so you sign a non-disclosure and don't create bad PR for them.

Leave. Leave now. Don't look back. There is nothing good to be had by staying.

Disagree- you should stay until they fire you, collecting salary in the meantime while not working (except to study for a new job). It's basically getting paid not to work and they've already established you have until the end of the pip period.

Well, I'll backtrack a little. It depends on what your priorities are, I suppose. I'd rather not have to explain being fired to a potential employer, and no salary would be worth staying where I'm not wanted.

But others may legitimately have other priorities.

Firing versus resignation makes no real difference.

It's easy to stay where you're not wanted- don't go to the office, don't answer email, don't do any real work. It's basically garden leave.

> Firing versus resignation makes no real difference.

In my experience, it makes a very large difference.

> It's easy to stay where you're not wanted

I think this depends on personality. It would be unbelievably difficult for me.

At least in the circles I work in, nobody does reference checks and the previous employer is limited to verifying that you worked there (not the reason you were let go) and if somebody asked, I'd just say (which seems to be the case here) that the company was downsizing and I was one of the people selected for being laid off.

For example, all those folks fired by Twitter... it would be silly to think that they weren't doing a good job, it was just a petulant move by Musk.

Well, I'm cursed by honesty. I'm not going to say anything untrue to a potential employer. It doesn't matter if anyone's checking or not.

being laid off is a totally different thing from being fired, though. I assume people who are laid off won't say "I got fired", but "I got laid off". The two things have very different implications.

Absolutely honest is a curse, because it's self-defeating. I am not advocating doing or saying anything unethical, but I don't think you are obliged to "tell the detailed truth" in a job interview. As a counterargument, a potential future coworker of mine had their offer rescinded after a background check determined they had worked for several companies known to steal IP, but left that off their resume.

At least in my case, saying you got fired has zero implications. I've been close to being fired before, and the reasons were bogus- but there's no way to communicate that without a hiring agent being biased (incorrectly) against you. And I don't know that there truly is a difference, legally speaking, in terms of "being fired" or "laid off". You got terminated either way.

You can be perfectly honest while still putting things in the best possible light, and without divulging everything (although lying by omission is still lying).

> I am not advocating doing or saying anything unethical

I thought you were advocating being deceptive. My apologies.

I try to be honest for ethical reasons, but being scrupulously honest (at least the best I can be as a fallible human being) has also served me very, very well in my career. I am quite certain I wouldn't have succeeded nearly to the degree I have if I weren't. So I recommend it very much.

It has, at times, caused me some loss, but the gains I've got from the habit have more than offset those.

> And I don't know that there truly is a difference, legally speaking, in terms of "being fired" or "laid off".

I wasn't saying there's a legal difference, I was saying there's a difference in the impression it makes on people. If you've been laid off, it was probably because of business considerations outside of your control. If you were fired, it was probably because of some sort of misbehavior on your part.

But if you say you were laid off when you were fired for cause, that's lying.

Agree. Stop being productive until the lay you off. Then take the severance and once you've used that milk unemployment insurance for as long as you can. Start a new job fresh and relaxed.

This is the way. You are not obligated to grind your life for an employer that treats you so badly. Milk them for money.

Bonus points, use the time to make the manager's life miserable.

Good lord. There's no way I could behave this way. I guess I'm just not mercenary enough.

Right, especially if it's been 11 months and there's equity vesting at 12. And talk with a lawyer if the PIP period just so happens to end right before the vesting date.

What is PIP?

Performance Improvement Program

Tongue in cheek: paid interviewing period

Performance improvement plan (or program). Typically the first step in a process to fire an employee for cause. It documents that as an employer|manager you've outlined a problem and created a plan that would allow the employee to meet expectations in the future.

Generally speaking, it should be a hint that its time to find a new job.

As another comment says, it's "performance improvement plan": saying to the employee that they're not meeting expectations and they need to hit a set of goals or be fired. It's part of the documentation process used by companies to protect against liability: if they're going to fire you they want a paper trail of a nondiscriminatory reason why they did it. The "rosier" theoretical side is that a PIP is a wake-up call to a struggling employee that gives them a chance to improve.

Here the claim is that the manager was forced to put X number of people on PIP regardless, which would be under something like a stack ranking system where a manager isn't allowed to say all their employees are performing adequately, they have to choose some to put on the chopping block. Amazon is famous for doing this.

If you can get proof that it’s due to a quota - sue.

PIP...? Define your acronyms on first use. Its so annoying

Everyone on blind knows what PIP means

Well the only pip I know is the python package manager and this story is posted on HN, so a lot of people are going to be in the same boat

The submitted followed the HN title guidelines to not change titles. HN Titles have a character limit and are not the spot to start to define terms. Sometimes in life, you got to learn stuff yourself. Just for giggles, I googled 'what is a pip' and it was defined as the first result.

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